31/05/2026
From Quaker Theology Group:
Let's Talk About THIS:
In his 1950 Pendle Hill pamphlet, Prophetic Ministry, Quaker historian Howard Brinton writes: “The three main types of Christianity” include “Catholic, Protestant, and Quaker; the altar-centered, the sermon-centered and, at least in intention, the prophetic” or experience-centered.
In his book Friends for 300 Years published two years later, Brinton spends several pages on Quakerism as a unique type of Christianity. The precedent for doing so, he says, was “set by Quakers of the seventeenth century,” specifically, by Robert Barclay in his Apology for the True Christian Divinity.
Barclay and other early Friends fervently distinguished their beliefs from those of Catholics and other Protestant groups.
“Sometimes, for the sake of completeness,” Brinton writes, “Barclay also brings in a fourth position which he calls the Socinian, representing the rationalistic point of view” (Socinians were skeptical of many elements of Christianity, such as the virgin birth and the divinity of Christ).
As an example of such distinctions, Brinton cites a section in the Apology in which Barclay defends the Quaker belief in “immediate revelation through the Spirit” which they considered a primary source for Truth. Says Brinton:
To those who argue the Spirit cannot be trusted as a guide to Truth, Barclay writes: “neither tradition, nor the scriptures, nor reason which the Papists [Catholics], Protestants and Socinians do respectively make the rule of their faith, are in any whit more certain.”
In summary, Brinton says, “The Catholics disagree about tradition; the Protestants about the meaning of Scriptures; and the Socinians about the conclusions of reason,” and “in the last resort they all depend on the Spirit which produced all three.” (A quick glance at church history and current events will show how each of these guides to Truth— tradition, scripture, reason, and being led by the Spirit—can be corrupted and manipulated. Seeking the Spirit within as a source of Truth is at least no worse than the other methods.)
In a telling comparison of the three approaches to Christianity, Brinton, a former university physics professor, sets up an analogy to different teaching/learning styles.
The Catholic approach is like a lecture or demonstration class. The Catholic emphasis on apostolic authority and ritual during worship focuses on the priest and the holy mass as a lecture focuses on the professor who conducts and explains experiments.
Protestant worship, with its emphasis on Scripture as authority explained by a preacher, is like a lecture class in which students listen to an expert expound on an authoritative text.
Brinton’s analogy assumes a class subject matter with underlying truth and substance, i.e. Christian faith and practice, though a Socinian/rationalist approach might involve a seminar-class discussion of whether the subject matter holds any truth worth studying.
The Quaker approach—”the laboratory method” in Brinton’s analogy—is characterized by a more participatory, inductive teaching/learning style in which students are actively involved. Brinton explains it this way: “the laboratory method is not unlike the Quaker meeting in which direct experience is sought and where words are used from time to time as they arise from, or lead to, direct experience.” This method involves more questions than answers, more exploration than memorization, and more mystery than certainty.
There are ways to be Christian, and early Friends distinguished them according to source of spiritual authority. Trusting their inner spiritual experiences as primary, the first Friends wisely used a combination of the other three sources to test and discern the validity of spiritual leadings:
authority vested in persons and tradition
authority vested in a text
authority vested in reason
authority vested in experience"
~Donne Hayden (see link to her Dec. 1, 2018 Friends Journal article below)
Full text of Brinton's 1950 pamphlet, here:
Quakerism has developed unique approaches to worship, communal decision-making, ongoing nurture of spiritual gifts, and ways to hold each other accountable in love & in truth. All spring from our experience of the Light Within or Inward Christ — God’s unmediated guidance of our faith community ....
